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Pushing the Line on the Air in Argentina

By Daniel Altman April 1, 2009 11:32 amApril 1, 2009 11:32 am

With all the scandal, intrigue, farce and passion in Argentine soccer, you’d expect the country to offer up a colorful cast of television commentators to describe the drama for viewers. Argentina’s broadcasters don’t disappoint, but sometimes they may be a little too much.

American sports commentators are fairly serious folks, focused on facts and tactics. And in the rare occasions when they step over the rhetorical line, U.S. announcers find themselves looking for a new line of work. By contrast, Argentina’s microphone men (and they are all men) hark back to the looser days of Cosell, Caray and Namath.

World Cup Qualifying

Fox Sports, home of the Libertadores Cup, teams the fog-horn-voiced Mariano Closs with the banal commentary of Fernando Niembro, who utters his platitudes with the serious mien of a scholar. On TyC Sports, Walter Nelson and Alejandro Fabbri might as well be a couple of regulars at your local bar, calling domestic matches with a combination of genuine enthusiasm and sniping humor. And on ESPN Deportes, Miguel Simón’s playful banter contrasts with the raspy “football is simple” pronouncements of Mario Alberto Kempes, hero of Argentina’s 1978 World Cup championship squad.

None of these commentators, however, can compare to Juan Manuel “El Bambino” Pons. Pons is a play-by-play man in the tradition of Marcelo Araujo, who was known for his extravagant goal shouts. But in his weekly English Premier League soccer matches, Pons takes Araujo’s exclamations a step further by singing an ode to almost every goal, improvising lyrics with the name of the scorer set to a popular tune that is sometimes piped in from a prepared recording (which he requests, audibly, by number).

He also has nicknames that will probably come as a surprise to several of the players. Liverpool’s Dirk Kuyt, whose name Pons pronounces “quit,” is called “Sopa” because Knorr produced a line of instant soups called Quick in the 1980s. Newcastle United’s goalkeeper, Steve Harper, is “La Foca” (the seal), probably because of the harp seal. Everton’s Tony Hibbert is “Doctor Hibbert” from The Simpsons, which is broadcast nightly in Argentina. And Arsenal’s Theo Walcott is “La Joya Negra,” the black jewel.

That last nickname, referring to Walcott’s skin color, would not be tolerated in the United States. But that doesn’t stop Pons in Argentina, though his employer, Fox Sports, is owned by a company based in Coral Beach, Fla. He refers to players of African origin by the color of their skin with astonishing regularity. The words “negro,” “negrito” and “moreno” (dark-skinned) are never far from his lips.

When Arsenal played Hull City last fall, Pons remarked on a tackle that “the white meat is McShane, the dark meat is Eboue.” The Ivory Coast international Emmanuel Eboue is black. When Liverpool played Middlesbrough in February, Pons described two of the Reds’ players as “a blond Dutchman, Kuyt, and a black Dutchman, Babel.” He even called Newcastle’s Kazenga LuaLua “a black sausage” last month during a match against Manchester United.

Pons’s partners in the broadcast booth, such as Javier Tabares, sometimes join him in using these terms. They’re not alone in the media; even La Nación, Argentina’s main broadsheet newspaper, referred to Serena Williams as “la morena” (the dark-skinned woman) after her victory in the U.S. Open last September.

But Maria José Lubertino, president of the National Institute Against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism (INADI) at Argentina’s Ministry of Justice, Security and Human Rights, calls these words and phrases “stigmatizing and stereotyping.”

“This type of the use of language that is normalized, naturalized, accepted, in reality reinforces stereotypes,” she said, and “could end up in violence or discrimination against people in these groups.”

Hernán Bidegain, the director of production for Fox Sports in Buenos Aires, said he did not see Pons’s pronouncements – aired all across Latin America, except in Venezuela, Brazil and the Caribbean – as discriminatory. “It’s not in any way offensive,” he said. “We get a good reception in all of our mail from Latin America. No one feels offended. It’s a funny style.”

Bidegain added that at Fox Sports, only Pons was allowed to use his particular style, and only in matches from the English Premier League. He also said that Fox Sports would reconsider its policy on Pons if anyone felt hurt by him.

“If someone felt offended, it’s something we’d obviously take into account,” he said. “That’s very clear.” But in response to potential concerns from groups like INADI, Bidegain said, “If they studied and understood the framework in which he does this, the response would be different.”

Given that the framework is soccer in Argentina, discriminatory comments are nothing new. Lubertino said that her institute monitored incidents of prejudice in soccer stadiums among fans, players and referees, as well as in commentary of domestic matches. With the help of journalism students, the institute compiled statistics on soccer chants, where racial and ethnic discrimination is particularly insidious.

“For locals, one in three are discriminatory,” she said. “For visitors, one in five. When they’re winning, they sing more discriminatory songs than when they’re in the opposite situation. And they sing more discriminatory songs against their traditional rivals.”

When asked if her staff was watching English soccer on Saturday mornings, however, Lubertino’s answer was, “Probably not.” To be sure, not all Argentine commentators share Pons’s approach. For example, during last month’s FA Cup quarterfinal from England, ESPN Deportes’s Jorge Barril referred to members of Chelsea’s diverse squad solely by name and nationality (except for Michael Essien, who is known in English, French and Spanish as “the Buffalo”).

Would the players themselves even care? Bidegain said that those who have passed through Fox Sport’s studios in Buenos Aires have enjoyed Pons’s commentary: “They take it as something funny, something with color.” It certainly does have that.

In Argentina there are many immigrants , people refer to each other with nick names , like El Ruso (the Russian) , El Turco (the Turk), and so on .
Using someones skin color to describe them is not beyond anyones greatest imagination there.

I’ve also heard of – El Enano (the midget) for any player who is of short stature.

Argentina does have a lot of established nicknames for its own players, but most of them have nothing to do with race. It’s true, however, that in Buenos Aires anyone of slightly dark countenance will often be referred to as “El Negro” by friends, just as anyone with slightly Asian-looking features will be “El Chino.” But you wouldn’t necessarily expect someone you didn’t know to use those terms to point you out in a crowd.

As for the match, the Bolivians smartly took advantage of the altitude, whistling long passes and shots past the clearly fazed Argentine players in the thin air. The Argentines simply weren’t 100 percent fit to play at 12,000 feet. Also, Papa and Lucho González (despite the fluke goal) probably shouldn’t be starters at this level.

The irony is that it was Maradona himself, as a friend of Evo Morales, who lobbied FIFA to keep allowing international matches at high altitude. That was before he became coach of La Selección, of course….

What is taboo in one country isn’t in another. Racism doesn’t look the same in every place either. people in the US are really sensitive to racism, but it is still everywhere. you are not supposed to descriminate, but ask immigrants in the US if they are always treated fairly. Nevermind if they are undocumented. People who say the “n” word are upset if other people say it (I understand the nuance in this case, but outsiders don’t). the same thing happens in other countries.

In latin america, calling attention to someone’s physical features, white, dark skin, eyes etc. isn’t a problem because it’s a fact. It would be strange for people to be sensitive about it. In the US, calling attention to the eyes of an asian would be a very awkward conversation.

I like a comment above that says you would never think of saying some things to people you don’t know. I agree with that. I also think that commentators encourage a familiarity and casualness that encourages this kind of thing.

As I said before, I am very disappointed with the NYT soccer section and the GOAL blog. It looks like that all reporters and south-america commentators in NYT are located in argentina. They emphasize their wins and completely ignore their defeats.

The moderators (read daniel altman, etc) usually do not accept any serious criticisms against the argentine team. Even worse, they try to minimize all other teams, specially brazil. There are several Instances when this occur, and one can prove it easily. brazil won portugal 6×2 in a friendly a while ago. but it is not listed among the games.

Argentina lost 6 x 1 to bolivia. There is not mention today in NYT today. But all around the word there is. even CNN. This means only one thing: bad reporting, and bad reporters. The NYT reporters are totally biased. It is a shame that one has moderators of blogs.
One more thing: many of the reports are copies (word by word) of other peoples work. Stop that now NYT. There must be some good editors watching this.

Daniels of NYT: even if you are argentines, you are still journalists. You should know what the profession means.

I am not being offensive. It is just the truth. You cannot stand the truth. Remember, you are damaging NYT’s reputation. Even if this is just a soccer blog, you need to be more just with your conscience.

Editor’s Note: The New York Times reported on Bolivia’s 6-1 victory over Argentina, along with other World Cup qualifying results, in this article which ran online and in the printed edition of the New York Times.

The Argentine FA made a big mistake in hiring Maradona. He should have been required at least some success as a coach before taking over the reins of quite possibly the most talented and complex national team in the world. This is not the sort of squad you will with all your heart to play well. You analyze and organize like crazy to get the most out of your talent. the right combination’s are unstoppable but the wrong combination’s paired with a poor strategy results in 6-1 losses. Maradona got it wrong because he doesnt know what it takes to be a coach. Take your heart off your sleeve, fire the son of a bitch and hire someone who has a clue about strategy and tactics.

1. I’m not Argentine, but I report on Argentine football because that’s what I know.

2. I challenge you to find one instance where what I’ve written in an article has been biased (written in a way that the facts could not possibly justify) or plagiarized (taken from another source without attribution).

3. Editors don’t know the outcomes of matches before they assign articles. Recently I wrote about the France v Argentina friendly. If Argentina had lost, I would have written about the match just the same. I also offered to write about this week’s qualifiers – before the matches were played – but the editors said there wasn’t enough space. These decisions had nothing to do with results.

4. It would be great if Goal could cover every league in the world. However, Goal doesn’t pay for submissions. If you’d like to hear more about Brazilian football, for example, you’ll just have to wait until an enthusiastic follower of the Brazilian game decides to donate his or her time – which is what I do.

Discrimination is a difficult thing to assess, I believe. In the case of Argentine commentators they only try to amuse people with their talk. Soccer here is a very deep emotional experience for fans and journalists alike. You cannot monitor every attitude of discrimination because that would be like living in an Orwelian state. I think that those who see ghosts where there are none are the ones who suffer from prejudice in the first place. Only loving each other will we eradicate discrimantion, and it won’t need an institution to monitor our behavior, it will naturally fade away.

Your article, while very thorough in its observations, has a problem: it is simply too ethnocentric. While I agree that commentary that is more focused on facts and the technical aspects of the game is more interesting to me, you also have to put that into cultural context. Fútbol in Argentina is watched in a different way and commentators seldom garner the attention of the public. Also, there is an excellent commentator you did not mention who has some of the qualities you seem to prize: Enrique Macaya Marquez.

An even worse example of ethnocentrism is your conclusion that just because someone uses the word black, the person must be racist. This comment fails to understand the “racial” reality in Argentina. As a country with virtually no black people, race is simply not part of the culture there. The terms “negro/a” and “negrito/a” are terms of endearment and are many times independent of skin color. While in the US discrimination has been confined to race or ethnicity, in Argentina discrimination is more related to socio-economic status.

Furthermore, it is pretty amazing that as a reporter you feel entitled to writing a sentence like: “Given that the framework is soccer in Argentina, discriminatory comments are nothing new.” Argentina is a country with virtually inexistent problems of racism, while the United States is a country where racism is institutionalized. Words like “black,” “negro” or “morena” are cause of terrible controversy, but hardly any any outrage is left over for the very real, enormous and ongoing inequity that exists between blacks and whites. I think more research would be useful in the writing of your articles, both to understand the subject you are talking about (a foreign country with a very different history and different social problems) and to look at your own society with from a more critical (and realistic) point of view.

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